Sunday, January 15, 2012

sun - 1280 x 1024



The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The rest of it (1.69%, 5,628 times the mass of Earth) consists of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, and others.